Sunday, 15 February 2009

The very first weekly round-up of SME! Oooh errr, this is where we hope we get it right. So what exactly did happen? Well for starters, we got the blog up, which we reckon was a highlight... the imagination of Share... being wedged in for Meursault’s set (apparently not everyone got in to see this)... our mental trip to California with Horse-Shoe Sky*... last night we also nipped back down to The Bowery to see a beautiful set by Rob St. John and Eagleowl... so yeah, that’s probably enough for now.

*For those of you that tuned in last night, you probably noticed that it’s not only us that have technical problems. We don’t know what happened, but we’re pretty upset about it, so sorry for making you stay up past your bedtime.

If you’re not up to much tonight, I’d suggest getting an early one – there’s a lot going on next week (more about that tomorrow).

Saturday, 14 February 2009

Later post than usual; it’s the weekend! Huzzah, and Happy Valentine’s Day from all of SME! Today we have a special Valentine’s treat for you lot (don’t we spoil you?). We’ve spent time buying records with the guy behind one of our favourite Fresh Air shows, and we thought we’d let you guys know all about it.

Who are you?

I’m Henry Lacey Ivry. I’m 5’7”, weigh 122lbs, have brown hair and brown eyes and am of Jewish denomination. I’m a second year University of Edinburgh student pursuing a joint honours degree in English Literature and Philosophy. I enjoy conversation, sparkling water, coffee with milk, tuna steaks, guacamole, and beer and bitches. I also have a fondness for The Hills on MTV and Law and Order. Oh, I’m 20 years of age, and from the Bay Area of California.

What’s the show called?

It’s called Horse-Shoe Sky, derived from the song “A Sky for Shoeing Horses Under” by Why?. I think it sounds obscure enough to be meaningful.

What’s the big deal?

I guess my brief manifesto would be that I’m playing progressive open minded alternative hip-hop. It’s mainly experimental hip-hop music with a focus in the anticon. collective (a Bay Area independent record label) but there are no real constraints. Coming from the Bay Area I was blessed growing up surrounded by so much good music, especially hip-hop. Because of this exposure at home I just wanted to keep it going across the pond, so I thought a radio show was a good way to get the music out, all the way from California.

What can we expect to hear?

All kinds of material from the anticon. collective, including Odd Nosdam, Pedestrian, and Why?, as well as stuff from Astronautalis, Subtle, and Sage Francis. I’ll also be playing some instrumental odd and ends from acts like Cut Chemist and Jel.

Friday, 13 February 2009

Yesterday we gave an underhand mention to Glasgow guys How To Swim. We’re out to catch them tonight. They’re playing one of our favoured haunts, Sneaky Pete’s at the night This Is Musichttp://www.myspace.com/thisismusicedinburgh. This Is Music takes place on the second Friday of every month, 8pm – 3am. Usual practice is bands 8pm – 11pm, followed by DJs ‘til 3am. These guys also have a podcast for your aural pleasure http://thisismusic.podbean.comAND you can find them on Facebook, so there’s really no excuse. (We’re a little bit jealous of their web based know-how to be honest.)

Joining How To Swim tonight is Edinburgh based Meursault www.myspace.com/meursaulta701. We’re super excited about Meursault because we heard somewhere (and we can’t remember where and hope we don’t get done in for plagiarism or what-not) that they’re like Frightened Rabbit meets The Postal Service.

If you can’t make it for the bands thenBroken Recordswww.myspace.com/brokenrecordsedinburgh are following them up with a DJ set from 11pm. We’ll try to stay off the whisky this time, and hope to see you there.

A message: "Hi guys. We said we’d get a bit more organised. We managed to write the above. We hope you like it. But regrettably I’ve been hit by Friday 13th, and have very recently been made aware of some unexpected and slightly distressing news. This may mean that we have to take a break for a bit. Hopefully we'll be able to bring you something, but it may not be as good as we’d like. All in all this has been an awful week to start the project – thank you for bearing with us." - J.We wish you peace, love, and a misfortune-free Friday 13th. xxx

Thursday, 12 February 2009

Good morning, good yawning. After the absolute shambles of not getting Wednesday’s post online, we’ve come to the decision that the SME team need to get slightly more ahead of the game. Thank you for telling us this. There’s bound to be some teething problems (and due to the state of one of SME’s teeth that is an awful pun) and for this we apologise. But we actually like it when you let us know we’ve messed up.

Anyway - less apologies, more music. Tonight (Thursday) one of us is off to The Bowery. Playing tonight isShare(www.myspace.com/andrewsisk ) who hail all the way from Canada. Joining them is The Second Hand Marching Band (www.myspace.com/thesecondhandmarchingband); we’re looking forward to these guys. Apparently there are 22 of them and they’re from all over Scotland and they play just about every instrument you can think of. They’re all in other bands too, which include (take a deep breath): House Mouse, Lula Maes, Frieght Logistics, Dananananaykroyd, Thing!, How to Swim, The Occasional Flickers, Eagleowl, Q without U, The Martial Arts, Brighter Better Days, Wall Street Ammunition Hero, The Just Joans, Remember Remember, and Tangles.

So.MuchMusic!

(We’re also off to see How To Swim tomorrow but more news about that then.)

However, if you’re not really up for a game of sardines then the The View (www.myspace.com/dryburgh) are playing The Picture House tonight. Unless you’ve already got a ticket SME reckon you’ll have to seek out a tout. (Obviously in the future we’ll be letting you know about more well known bands well in advance so we won’t be telling you useless stuff like this...)

Also on at the Wee Red Bar tonight is The Love Gig, 7pm – 10pm. It’s free, which we love, and local guys The Tin Cans (www.myspace.com/thetinscanslovesu) are playing. They’re promising beer and biscuits which sounds like a sweet deal, so you may see some of us down there...

Right, that’s about it from us for now. Pick a show. We’ll see you there, and we’ll talk about it tomorrow.

Peace and love, xxx

P.S. We also feel that although it’s completely off the point we should let you know about this: www.facebook.com/home.php?ref=home#/group.php?gid=45053188117 just on the off chance that you’re in Manchester tonight. HeartBeats are some of our good friends, and we know they know their music, so we feel we should give them some support and wish g’luck for their opening night.

Tuesday, 10 February 2009

It’s day two, the sun is shining, and SME headquarters is looking a mess already. Which is why we want to get some kind of routine going - some sort of order to the blog so you, our lovely readers, know what to expect. Here’s a run-down of what we plan to do:

Mondays: A preview of what’s going on in the coming week. Mainly gigs we’ll be at and nights we’ll be ripping up. In the nice way of course.

Tuesdays – Saturdays: What we’re feeling about anything and everything music wise that is thrown our way. We’ll be covering student bands, local bands, non-local bands that happen to be gracing our presence, things on Fresh Air that have caught our attention, anything else that we’re loving... everything. There might be some more routine to this as we progress, but it’s hard to tell right now.

Sundays: A round up of what we’ve loved about the week, what’s hit the spot and what hasn’t really floated our boats.

Firstly, we have a bit of a soft spot for the University of Edinburgh radio station Fresh Air www.freshair.org.uk, and we wish that more people would tune in. We’ve heard complaints that it’s too indie, but if it’s you that’s complaining then we urge you to GET INVOLVED and turn things around. One thing that SME want to do is get you mixed up in it all. We’ll be picking out some of our favourite shows over the next few weeks and doing some profiles in order to get you inspired, so get excited.

We’ll also obviously be using a lot of MySpace sites www.myspace.com. After much deliberation we think MySpace is the easiest way to share info about bands. However...

...if there’re any songs that we just have to share with you then we’ll probably use Hype Machine http://hypem.com.

FINALLY, if there’s any reviews we want you to read that we haven’t done ourselves then we’ll probably link to The Journal www.journal-online.co.uk/articles/arts+and+entertainment/music. However, we're also good friends with Student music section, so would urge you to pick up a copy of that every Tuesday too. We like to keep things student-based. We’re thinking about linking our own review-based blog to this, but until we make the team bigger it doesn’t look as though it’ll be that comprehensive. If you’ve any reviews to share with us however, send ‘em this way and we’ll see what we can do. Again, this is a way for you guys to get involved, so dooo it.

Right, that’s about it for now. Apologies it’s taking us some time for getting the site up properly, we’re super excited about it all but want to make sure we do things properly. There’s some good stuff in the pipeline, we promise, so watch this space.

Peace and love, xxx

PS. Thanks for all the feedback so far – keep the car running!P.P.S. Although we don't like to admit it, we're having some HTML troubles. Any help much appreciated.

Monday, 9 February 2009

Student Music Edinburghis an Edinburgh-based blog written by students, bringing you news on what’s going down in city’s music scene. We're aiming primarily at students, because we think we know what they like.

“Why?”

We want to try to raise the profile of the city’s music scene. In contrast to Glasgow, Edinburgh falls short, and we want to change that for musicians and fans alike.

By devoting far too much of our time to music instead of our degrees. If you’re interested in getting involved, either leave us a comment or email s0791740@sms.ed.ac.uk. We're always looking for new tunes, so if there's a band you can't get enough of, or if you're making music yourself, let us in on it.

Finally, let us know what you think! We’re students, not mind readers, so give us some feedback. Pretty please.